


i set a fire just to see what it kills

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Awkward Kissing, Betrayal, Brainwashing, Canon-Typical Violence, Criminal Masterminds, F/M, Gen, Grant Ward is a villain let him stay that way, Gunshot Wounds, Hospitalization, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Ian Quinn knows what's up, John Garrett is the worst, LOL WHAT IS A PLOT, Skye and May team up, Skye works a lot to get what she wants, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, evil ladies, fandom needs to make Quinn/Raina a thing i'm just saying, like Coulson needs more betrayal in his life, mentions of torture, okay this got WEIRD, there needs to be more fics about Raina, to be jossed very soon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 08:29:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1503722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Bang, bang - my baby shot me down.</i> </p><p>Or, Coulson finds out there can indeed be further betrayal in his life, Skye starts living in the hospital and loses it a bit, May calls for some help, Grant Ward is a murderer and Quinn and Raina discover a common interest. And we finally meet the Clairvoyant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i set a fire just to see what it kills

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write a fic about my pet theory of "The Cellist is the Clairvoyant!" since forever so here it is, hopefully before it gets Jossed. It got LONG and WEIRD and I caught Ian Quinn feels in the process, which is disturbing. Some sort of spiritual twin to [this other fic I wrote](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1426834), in crackiness as in everything else. Goes to show that even the stories I write about Coulson are really all about Skye.
> 
> Title from The National.

  


  


"Sorry, dear. I didn't know you'd take it so hard."

She raises her gun.

He looks at her, struck dumb.

She breaks his sweet little newly-formed heart.

She pulls the trigger.

(what you have to know is this: she always pulls the trigger)

She pulls the trigger again: two gunshot wounds are always better than one.

 

 

**[x]**

This is how it goes: she pulls the trigger and it was no love my dear. It's time the Clairvoyant reveals herself.

"But..." is all Coulson manages to say. Is all Coulson manages to say for himself.

But.

Everybody says that, she thinks. The helpless "but..." And it always gives her a thrill, _the moment_ , rug pulled and curtain fallen, masks fallen. They never see it coming. She's done this often enough and they never see it coming.

This is how it goes: the Clairvoyant pulls the trigger on her former lover, and of course it's not the first time.

This is how it goes: Skye's clothes are soaked in blood (but not hers this time) and May's expression is blank, shut down. The trip to the hospital is the longest they've ever experienced.

 

 

**[x]**

If she is being honest (and she is always honest, even when she lies lies lies) the dinners at the Richmond were really boring. Because he was a boring man. Which was the point, in a way. Nick Fury's good little soldier, so unremarkable, so gray, and it was so easy to get under his skin. But having to actually put up with his old-fashioned charade (then she found out it wasn't a charade, which was even more boring) and his efforts at casual elegance (she could see right through it, no matter how many Michelin-star restaurants he takes her to – you can't fake pedigree, darling, she thought, you can't fake pedigree unless you're me, your accent is showing, no matter how well you match your suit and your tie) and his pathetic apologies whenever he had to cancel a date because of his work. 

(she asks, once or twice; nothing obvious, nothing he can notice)

This is what she thought, before: there are endless men like Phil Coulson, it's only circumstancial that she gets stuck with one for a little while.

Men like Nick Fury would never show any crack but their good little soldiers, that's another story.

This is another story.

(this is not a love story)

The sex was better than the conversation, but she supposes it's because it was all about her power over him. Sex is power. Because it can't be anything else. Sometimes she got anxious and tired of him, because he fancies himself a generous lover and the cellist would appreciate that but the Clairvoyant didn't like him lingering and he was worldly enough to know she couldn't be satisfied that quickly. _Men_ – she much prefers when they are selfish.

 

 

**[x]**

May is telling her to change her clothes. Change her shirt at least. Skye hasn't noticed the state of her until she draws her fingers across her stomach (right where her own scars sit) and touches dryness, hard edges instead of soft cotton. The pale blue shirt has turned a dirty-and-wet-sand kind of brown. She knows May is right but she thinks that if she tears her eyes from Coulson just for one second, he will die. She's held on to this belief all the way here. They're outside the E.R. looking through a tiny rectangular glass as the doctors work on him – harshly, Skye wants to walk in and scream at them to be more careful, Coulson's body is being shaken, one surgeon at the time, like a lifeless puppet.

"But–"

But May stares down at her, hard, mutters _Go, now_ and Skye guesses she takes orders from May now. 

"Are there any clothes I can borrow?" she asks a nurse, hoping for some fresh, cold scrubs.

"There's the Lost and Found," the nurse says. "Don't worry, we washed everything."

Like it matters. Skye grabs a green t-shirt two sizes too big for her and disappears into the bathroom.

She doesn't throw her shirt away, just folds it as best as she can and puts it in her bag again. She hesitates to wash _Coulson's blood_ off her skin, off her chest and shoulders. Her hands. She remembers holding his hand all the way to the hospital, waiting for him to squeeze her fingers in return, but he never moved. Dead hands. When she finally decides to wash she decides to scrub the skin raw until not a molecule of blood remains. She doesn't want to feel death, his death, on her body. Where is that alien goo when you need it? she thinks, grimly. She is too stunned to think about what just happened. _The Clairvoyant_. No. Too wounded by it to _comprehend_. Surely there's been a mistake. The love of Coulson's life. Surely it's a lie. Surely surely surely – 

When she comes back May is gone and the doctors are gone and Coulson is gone. She panics until she feels a hand on her back and turns around.

"They took him upstairs to operate," May tells her. "Come on."

Skye is not sure how she makes it to the elevator but she suspects it's May's strongs arms as she guides her there, the thing that is holding her together.

 

 

**[x]**

Of course John Garrett isn't her only proxy (ask around – different accents will tell you different stories; but in every case the Clairvoyant is always a man, she's learned people are much easily convinced that way) and he is not even the most willing one.

(Garrett imagines himself the man with the plan, the leader; ego is not a great thing when you are already working with an egomaniac and she can make her own diagnosis, thank you very much)

Garrett detests finesse, something as esoteric as being called _the Clairvoyant_. But he loves the power that comes from watching people's faces sunk in wonder and terror when they put it together, when they realize. 

Garrett is all knuckles and split lips and gunshot wounds in the right precise spot where you'll bleed slowly and painfully for hours.

She needs to let that version of the Clairvoyant go.

She needs something better, now that SHIELD knows. She needs herself.

She picks up the phone. "Quinn? _It's time_."

 

 

**[x]**

They are outside the operating room and May brings her a cup of coffee from the vending machine. Skye eyes the weak color of the liquid, feeling more depressed by it than anything else. The world doesn't make sense anymore and the coffee is bad, there's no hope for them, is there. It's like, the last straw,

"How much do you know about her?" May asks her. Skye guesses she at least read the file before. "About what she means to him."

Skye nods, sad and shy.

"I know," she says. "He told me about her. Sometimes... he talks to me sometimes."

She knows May can fill the rest. May talks to her some times, too. Skye doesn't need to tell her, about the nights after Ward, about Coulson keeping her company while the plane went on, going nowhere, going nowhere fast. She got used to seeing Coulson like that, in the half dark of night-flying, talking to her in a low, comforting voice, talking himself raw until Skye felt well enough to sleep. 

"So you know what this means?" May asks.

"Yeah."

 

 

**[x]**

It's time the Clairvoyant shows herself.

John Garrett has been useful but ultimately she doesn't need him, not in the long run. She's quite picky with her minions, and sadistic murderers are not the order of the day. Specially sadistic murderers who think they are calling the shots.

"What about our efficient Agent Ward?" Quinn asks. Quinn is not exactly the sharpest tool in the toolbox, but he's sharp enough for this.

"He can't give us what we want, not now," she says.

"What then? The same fate as Garrett?"

She smiles the smile she knows terrifies him: " _Not quite_."

 

 

**[x]**

He needs three operations. His left lung is done for. The doctors look at May when they talk, something in Skye's face upsets them. Coulson doesn't wake up. The doctors say _we'll have to wait and see_ , we always meaning you. Coulson doesn't wake up. The doctors say fifty-fifty. Coulson doesn't wake up. The nurses tell her _there's such a thing as visiting hours_ , Skye walks right past them, see her walk past them. Coulson doesn't wake up. Skye sleeps on the chair next to his bed. Skye doesn't really sleep. May brings her food. Skye doesn't really eat. May gets angry and Skye eats. Coulson doesn't wake up. Simmons is talking to her. Skye doesn't really listen. Coulson doesn't wake up. Simmons is hugging her. Skye doesn't really move. The nurses come and go and Skye has learned the dosage of every medicine he needs by heart, she watches them closely, alert to any mistake. It's three days later. Skye switches through tv channels, volume on mute, all night. She bites the inside of her mouth, not hard enough for blood, she doesn't want to smell blood ever again. It's four days later. Skye sits on the chair next to his bed and draws her knees under her chin. Coulson doesn't fucking wake up.

 

 

**[x]**

"I have a surprise for you," Quinn says, curling his fingers around Raina's forearm, drawing her away from the dank basement. "Follow me. There's someone you need to meet."

 

 

**[x]**

"This is unfair," she tells him; not really looking at him, she can't stand seeing his face with no life in it, unmoving. She remembers how expressive those features are when he's awake, the way he would wiggle his eyebrows to underline something witty he's said – or something he _thinks_ is witty, the idiot. It's too unfair, Skye thinks, wanting to scream at him. She repeats, doesn't scream, remembers she's in a hospital: "It's so unfair. _I woke up_. I woke up very quickly. You know. You know, you remember, _you were there_."

 

 

**[x]**

"This is quite the wonderful surprise," Raina says, in childlike wonder, almost shrieking.

The Clairvoyant smiles. _Of course it is_.

 

 

**[x]**

Near death experiences, but not your own, Skye thinks, bring a particular clarity. Much more than being seduced by a sociopath, she thinks, but she might be wrong – she hasn't slept in days.

The rest of the team come and go. Simmons and Fitz and Trip visit and leave (Simmons lingers sometimes, asking a million medical questions to the poor unsuspecting residents, her own way of coping) and no one really questions Skye's permanent status on the bedside chair (if they question it, she doesn't notice) those first days. After a week the nurses have stopped trying to coax her into normal things like eating and sleeping and changing clothes and maybe even _going home_ (this last one Skye witnesses with a particularly desperate sneer on her face because, yeah, _right here_ ) and at some point she thinks May talks to someone in admin so that they'd just leave Skye alone. May understands the value of being left alone very well.

May doesn't say _You're killing yourself_ so Skye doesn't need to say _Good_.

Coulson still doesn't wake up.

Coulson keeps _not waking up_.

 

 

**[x]**

In a scorching white room Grant Ward screams without a noise.

 

 

**[x]**

"I have to leave. We have a mission."

"Her?" Skye asks, hoping against hope for a clue. Hoping it's not her. Hoping it's never her again and this was all a stupid nightmare.

May shakes her head.

"No. HYDRA. We have to oversee the transport of an unknown object to Washington. There's suspicion Garrett's team might try to intercept it."

"I'll come with."

May raises her hand. "No. It's not the kind of operation that requires your help. Trip and I will do, and Agent Shaw is sending a couple of his guys from the Hub. You don't need to come."

"But –"

"Stay with him. He needs you."

Even while Skye keeps her _I'm part of this team don't you dare shut me out_ expression on she's secretly grateful to May for taking the decision out of her hands. She couldn't leave Coulson alone, anyway. He has been alone enough as it is.

She looks at him, still and pale on the bed. She wishes she could see his eyes.

"He was in love with her," Skye says, quietly, so quietly. May nods. "He loved her so much. I – _It's Coulson_ , I guess you have to be really evil to throw that away."

May gives her a tiny sympathetic smile, brushes her hand against the back of Skye's neck as she leaves.

 

 

**[x]**

She stands over the bodies of fallen, lesser men. Men are always _lesser_. Everyone else is _lesser_ too, it doesn't even have to be men. It's always been like this. She doesn't even mind, being just a symbol, if it gets the job done. Clad in a femme-fatale suit, more fatale than any femme fatale ever had the right to be.

Holding the smoking gun, hiding her smile behind 1940s smoke. That's the image, that's the symbol. That's your poster villain. And – 

John Garrett is dead.

Ian Quinn smirks: "I guess this is the part where we all swear loyalty to the new king."

 

 

**[x]**

Before she was _the Cellist_ , of course, and before she was the Clairvoyant, she was many things. Many names. A blank slate every time. It's easy, if you have the skills.

She was too beautiful and too smart and the world was too small. She discovered this early, run away from the knowledge, _run away_. She reappeared ten years later, rich and evil and _The Clairvoyant_. There were those who doubted her powers, but for any of those there were two who said: "Never play poker with her." And hey, how do you think she made her fortune?

This is what you have to know: she doesn't have any supernatural powers, she never had.

She never needed them anyway.

 

 

**[x]**

His name is Ward but not Grant.

Of course not.

He was not a little brother; he was the big brother who got angry because his little brother ate a piece of his cake.

The cake was his.

 _The cake was his_.

He is Ward, just not Grant.

 

 

**[x]**

It's not like she has completely abandoned the team.

She's still helping out, she has found a way to juice up the hospital's wifi and encrypt all her communications so she can be part of whatever is going on in the plane. She talks to Simmons almost every day (Skye doesn't say much but Simmons doesn't seem to mind) and she's even tentatively approached Trip about him helping out with her training.

So it's not like she's completely lost it. She's just lost it a bit.

 

 

**[x]**

She met Quinn in Cambridge, actually. Briefly. She doesn't think he remembers. No one remembers her at that age. It's a good thing they don't.

When she was young and smart as fuck and with a knack for reading people in ways no one else could. The psychology students were ever so impressed. She never had to pay for a drink in any pub, apart from the obvious reason why she wouldn't have to, anyway.

"They say you can read minds," and when he was young Ian Quinn was a little less obnoxious, a little less rehearsed in his pick-up lines, the blue eyes a little clearer, nicer. He already had the money to back them up (men like Quinn, they don't make their money, they are born with it, while women like her – scratch that, there are no women like her) but he didn't have the fame. Not that it was ever going to work with her, the line, and he knew that.

She remembers him, years later, still a footnote in a magazine – a business magazine, though she knows he wishes it was a science & technology review, she knows he still dreams of being the new Tony Stark without the righteousness, without the having to actually get out of his house to do it.

 

 

**[x]**

"We found Ward," May tells her over the phone.

Skye looks around the blue hospital room, clenches her fist into the bedsheets.

 _This would be a great time for you to wake up_ she says but not-says to Coulson. She says but not-says _I really need you right now, A.C._

 

 

**[x]**

Raina is afraid of her. The Clairvoyant can tell what she is thinking: What stops her from doing to Raina what she did to Garrett? Or discarding her like she's just done with Grant Ward?"

" _Grant Ward_ was just a tool," she says; a good tool, she thinks, one with such a tolerance for sodium pentothal that it turned him into an asset beyond his proclivity for violence and lies. A method actor with an expiration date. "And he wasn't _my_ tool. You're far more valuable."

Raina trembles, but not in fear.

 

 

**[x]**

Ward can't tell them anything. He wants to, but he can't.

"He's been wiped clear," May tells her, Skye recieving the call in one of those rare breaks she takes in the hospital cafeteria.

"What do you mean?"

"He doesn't remember any information about the Clairvoyant, anything useful from his time in HYDRA."

"They can do that?"

"Apparently," May sounds worn out and frustrated. "You should see the look in his eyes, Skye. He's not a person, he's a slot waiting to be filled."

"Wow. Also: how could they do something like that? No, literally _how_."

"It shouldn't be impossible. The kind of tech these guys have..."

"The machine they put Coulson under," Skye offers, the memory of that day returning, very cold and very sharp.

"Well, they have that now," May says. She doesn't say: they have everything now, most of the contents of the Sandbox, the Fridge, who knows where else.

"Yeah," Skye sighs, trying hard not to think about which part of that is her fault, all the information she gave Ward.

There's silence on the other end of the line. If it wasn't completely absurd Skye would say she can actually hear May thinking.

"How is he?" she asks, eventually.

"Coulson? Still doing the Sleeping Beauty act," Skye replies. She realizes she sounds like she is pissed at Coulson. She realizes she _is_ pissed at Coulson.

"And how are you?"

" _Me_. I'm fine. I wasn't the one who got shot by her treacherous ex-lover." Then she realizes. "Oh, I guess I kinda did too, in a way."

"You sound tired," May says. 

Skye appreciates that in absence of Coulson it seems like May has taken upon herself to act as resident mother hen. 

Skye always knew May had it in her.

 

 

**[x]**

Listen, the truth is – the cello is not even her favorite instrument.

If you ask her she's much better playing the piano. But the cello is more useful to root out the weaknesses of certain men. She flashes her beautiful neck and they are doomed in more ways than they could ever imagine. It would be funny if it wasn't so damn pathetic. And there's something seemingly too ambitious about a pianist – she's learned from trial-and-error, some men are put off by it.

Of course Phil Coulson is not the first person to meet _the Cellist_. He's not even the first to fall in love.

 

 

**[x]**

For a while Ward only lets May visit him in imprisonment.

It should surprise Skye but it doesn't. After everything that's happened she guesses Ward needs some common ground, and a hard pitiless stare. It doesn't bother her – she's not planning on seeing him for a long, long time.

 

 

**[x]**

This is your prefabricated love story, Agent Coulson; unlike the real thing it is perfect and without sharp edges, and not even death can touch it. This how love is supposed to be, but isn't:

She knew he was going to attend the concert that evening. Finding that out was easy (Garrett is not the first mole she's employed). She pulled her strings (not too difficult, this false identity of hers, she has a good reputation in the musical world – you can Google it if you have doubts) and she stepped in as substitute cello. An unfortunate incident of food poisoning with their regular player, you see.

It was a first incursion, a way of setting things into motion; she didn't expect him to approach her that first night. It was just good luck that he did.

She was his type. Rather: she had made it her business to be his type. It wasn't difficult, it was all on his file.

At first she plays it haughty and distant, like she couldn't possibly be coaxed into something as earthly as a relationship – but with just that hint of vulnerability that says that she would want to, anyway, if only the right man for her came along. It's the perfect balance.

Agent Coulson likes a challenge, but not _too much_ of a challenge.

I could break you like a twig, brother, she thinks as they walk along the riverside, Hollywood movie bullshit stuff and of course he's the kind to offer his jacket to a lady, of course he is. This is going to be so easy, somewhere beneath the Cellist the Clairvoyant says to herself. Well, she's not wrong.

Except – 

It becomes clear from day two that he is not going to let it slip on any SHIELD intel.

That's just fine, she's made miscalculations like this before. She just has to wait it out, find the right moment to cut him free.

They've been together for a couple of months (blissfully that doesn't amount to a lot of time together, the busy lives of busy people, and she remembers why she uses _the Cellist_ so often for this kind of thing) when she announces she's taken a job in Portland. He doesn't take it too well, but he doesn't take it too hard – she would be offended, if this wasn't exactly what she had predicted.

Then he dies.

This is convenient, she thinks, looking at the damage report from before the Battle of New York.

Then he comes back to life.

This is interesting, she thinks, going through Maria Hill's Level 8 transmissions.

Who knows what mysteries lie behind mediocre men?

 

 

**[x]**

Then, without warning, Coulson wakes up.

Except it's not exactly waking up. He'll be erratic for a couple of days, the doctors tell Skye, they have to pump more drugs into him because of the pain he'll be in when he wakes, he won't be able to talk or even recognize anyone for a little while. Skye doesn't care – she doesn't care he can't tell who she is when he looks at her, she doesn't care because he is breathing and moving and she can finally see his eyes again.

Coulson wakes up and, three days later, he looks up and sees Skye sitting by his side and – 

" _Skye_."

 

 

**[x]**

"There's a reason why your family never looked for you," she tells Raina.

Raina's mouth is always half-open these days, lips already forming an awestruck _O_ to everything she says. Loyalty is hardly ever useful to her but the kind of loyalty Raina offers is.

"Some day I will tell you everything," she tells Raina and pleasure uncoils in her stomach when she realizes Raina has no idea she's lying.

"Seeing the future is easy," she tells them, Raina and Quinn, her little summer soldiers, sitting together on the couch in her living room. She talks like this, like a comic-book villain with a knack for the abstract grandeur, because she knows _they_ enjoy it. Or rather Quinn enjoys it; Raina eats it up. "Seeing the past, it takes a bit more effort."

 

 

**[x]**

"How do you feel?" she's almost too afraid to know the answer, the real answer.

She knows he doesn't trust his voice yet, she knows how much it hurts for him to try to breathe, how much it will hurt for a long time.

"Like a truck went through my lungs," Coulson says. Skye realizes she's missed his voice.

"Close enough, a couple of bullets."

She stares at him, finally taking in the extent of the damage, now that he is awake. It takes everything she's got not to wince.

"I can see your face," he tells her. "That bad, uh?"

"You have a bit of recovery to do."

"So they tell me."

Silence falls between them. Silence with a very precise shape carved into it. It's the first time Skye is not that glad of this honesty thing she and Coulson have.

"I can't even imagine how you must feel," she says, before she can stop herself.

He pauses a moment, carefully choosing his words.

"Well, what happened with you and Ward. You can get an idea."

"Yeah, but I wasn't –"

"What?"

"Nothing," she replies promptly. What good could it do to tell him about this? Now, specially. "Yes, I guess I get the idea."

 

 

**[x]**

She has been so many people, but none of them have been her. Definitely not _the Cellist_.

She has worn many names: Lillian, Claire, Jeanette, Laura, Dina, Karen, Laura again, Celine, Kristin, Mathilde, Kate. She has predilection for hard sounds and European-sounding identities. Call that last bit her natural American insecurities. She doesn't always choose her own name – sometimes it's just a matter of circumstance. She's many people at the same time. When she was younger she could only inhabit one at any given moment, she could only rotate. The rotations became shorter and swifter. One day you could find her dressed as a Hamptons heiress and the next one she was hustling boys in Kentucky pool halls, and the next she was finding her way through the backrooms of Trocadero casinos, conversing in Chinese with the richest, most powerful men in the world. At thirteen she had already scratched her Dallas accent raw, filing it away in her muscle memory in case there ever comes a time when she needs it again. At thirteen she already knew the secret. She knows the secret to eternal life: you have to be everyone at the same time.

Raina thinks she's unlucky because she doesn't know who she is. The Clairvoyant has spent a lot of time and effort (blood –not hers– and sweat and, never tears) and money to ignore who she is.

 

 

**[x]**

It's still early, so early the lights are still off, the room illuminated only by the machines and the emergency generator. Outside his room it's quiet, as well, the doctors and nurses walking by every few minutes, but with that particular quieted-down step they have on night shifts.

Even before she opens her eyes Skye can tell he's awake, which, mmm, bad.

She thinks he's going to throw her out of his room this time.

"Skye?" that voice could mean anything. He sounds surprised, for one.

At some point during the night she has moved from her chair and climbed on to the bed, lying carefully besides Coulson. This is not the first time she does this, she thinks, but it's the first time he's awake for it.

"I'm sorry, I fell asleep on you."

"It's okay."

No, it's not okay. She realizes this is weird and Coulson is just being polite. She fees like this invasion needs something of an explanation.

"I just wanted to... you were out of it for so long that I began to think you'd never wake up. And now you are awake and I can't quite believe it. I'm afraid you'll just... disappear again. I just wanted to get closer, I'm really sorry, I am."

She wonders if she's able to say all these things because they are in half-darkness and he can't see her face well. He puts his hand to her hair, softly tangling his fingers in it.

She doesn't know why she does it, she's probably remembering how it felt, him _not waking up_ for so long, but she lifts her head and presses her lips against Coulson's mouth. It's not – she wants to call it chaste and friendly but she's not sure of even that. She's just confused. And then she's not, she's not confused at all. This is going to ruin everything, she thinks, not even thinking about the kiss, and she lies very still, like maybe if she does Coulson wouldn't notice what she's just done.

" _Skye_?"

She keeps waiting for the tone of his voice to change but it doesn't.

She keeps waiting for the hand in her hair to go away but it doesn't.

He seems to just – let it be.

He lets her go back to sleep on his shoulder, her hand over his heartbeat more accurate than the readings from these machines around them.

 

 

**[x]**

"How does it feel?" Quinn asks her, because he knows Raina has used the machine before, knows how to operate it.

Raina gives him one of those crooked half-smirks of hers. "It's not like surfing, I can tell you that."

Quinn doesn't feel particularly comforted by this. And if using the machine leaves you in a state much like Raina's... He shudders to think. He didn't particularly like seeing it used on Agent Ward either. He didn't like what it made him feel, seeing one of the most ruthless murderers he'd ever met being transformed into something that resembled those androids from the movies, the ones with the clear stare void of soul. Agent Ward had almost looked _harmless_ afterwards.

He stares at the machine, brushing fingertips across its smooth white surfaces.

"You can try it," Raina says, her small hand fitting the hollow of his collar. "Is there something you've forgotten and you want to recover?"

"No," Quinn answers. "The things I've forgotten were very purposedly forgotten."

"Well, it can make you forget, too. That's useful."

It is, and Quinn feels tempted and suspects Raina knows exactly why. It _is_ tempting; the slipping weight of a girl in his arms, the warm, dark dampness of her blood, the look of utter disbelief in her eyes. Yes, he'd want to forget. But no, he wants to remember, too.

 

 

**[x]**

There are bits of Grant Ward's brain that do not belong to him. Scratch that – there are bits of Grant Ward's brain that do not belong to him, but the rest is silence.

He wonders who brought this woman in to deal with him. May, probably. Yes, he can imagine that.

"It all made sense to me," he says. "Being Grant Ward, agent of HYDRA."

"You were," the red-head woman says. "But was it you who put him there in the first place? That's what we want to know."

She's lying. He knows what they want to know. They want to know what happened with Garrett, they want to know about the real Clairvoyant. She left that information in his brain – that she was other than what everyone (even him) had assumed. But she didn't leave anything useful: no plans, no locations, no code names. 

"It doesn't matter," he says. He is not Grant Ward, so he knows what Grant Ward has done. "I killed so many people. There's no forgiveness for that."

"No. There isn't," Natasha Romanoff says.

 

 

**[x]**

"Come on, kids," she tells Quinn and Raina, "beautiful people, we have work to do."

The world burns, and it's not the calculated terror of HYDRA, oh no, she's beyond that. HYDRA wanted a world of perfect, deadly order. She doesn't want something deadly (she brings about death, of course, _always_ , but that's a side effect of her real power – and she brings death to others, never to herself), she wants something alive. In chaos there's aliveness. In chaos there's opportunity. She's all about opportunity.

 

 

**[x]**

She takes over his hospital room. More than that, she practically moves in. Most nights she sleeps in the small couch she's been using since the second week of Coulson's convalescence, when the nurses realized she wasn't going anywhere and they at least tried to get her to sleep somewhere comfortable. When Coulson's face of worry and exasperation is too much Skye walks down the hallway and sleeps in the doctors' longue. If they mind they don't say. Or maybe Skye is just ignoring them. It's not even the most precarious living arragement she's had to slip into in her life. It's not even the first time she gets used to taking showers in a hospital.

She has her stuff everywhere: a bag full of clothes to change into dropped by his bed, piles and piles of magazines she reads, cross-legged, sitting on the edge of his bed, sometimes out loud to him, all sorts of electrics lying around, chargers and power cords. Coulson pretends he hates it, all this mess, but Skye knows better. He seems to have accepted she's not going anywhere, too, and at least she's company, and she takes him down to physical therapy, which is better than letting the nurses do it. They watch tv together and they coordinate the team's missions from the room and Coulson never says _shouldn't you be on the field with them?_ because Coulson, too, knows better.

"Breathing still hurts?" she asks him.

"It's more like an itch now," he replies.

She hasn't climbed into his bed ever since that night and they have never mentioned it again. 

 

 

**[x]**

They adore her, both of them.

After the charmlessness of John Garrett they find her charisma refreshing.

Quinn thinks she's elegant and dangerous and smarter than him and for the first time in his life he's not petty about it.

Raina follows her like a dog, hopping and waging her tail at the joyous sight of her. The Clairvoyant buys her more dresses, always spot on with the color and the cut. The Clairvoyant smiles, warm and proud, when Raina shows her how good they look on her.

Quinn thinks Raina has a screw loose, and Raina thinks Quinn is a sleazy loser – but after spending time with Garrrett and his smirking protege they are willing to think of each other as the closest to ideal partners you can get. And there's always _her_. Between them, above them, binding them.

They both adore her and they find common ground in this adoration.

 

 

**[x]**

Natasha Romanoff doesn't look like a superhero at all. In fact, Skye thinks, she doesn't look like anything at all, not any particular kind of person, she looks like someone waiting to become a person. It's a strange feeling but that's the vibe Skye gets.

She spends a good while alone with Coulson. He seems happy to see her, beyond the unfortunate circumstances. Skye wonders at they easiness with which they move around each other. She doesn't need to be told they go way back. She finds fascinanting to meet people from Coulson's life from before. Skye is not sure Agent Romanoff has told him why she's here. If she's told him about Ward.

"You called her in?" she asks May.

"She's been helping out with Ward. She's kind of an expert."

"On this?"

May gives her a an ambiguous look. "On many things."

Natasha Romanoff listens as they tell her the story of the Clairvoyant, and Skye suspects Coulson hasn't said a thing to her, and wonders what kind of relationship they really had, back in the day. Romanoff had said she owed Coulson a debt but nothing exact beyond that, and that could mean anything, really. May had said _Natasha_ was retired, or taking a sabbatical, Skye is not sure.

Natasha doesn't look shocked or horrified at the story.

"I've been that," she tells her and May. "I've been _her_. The betrayer. The intimate betrayer. Never had to watch it from the other side, though. I didn't imagine it would be with Coulson, he was always so careful about... _everything_."

"But, I'm sure you did it for the right reasons, you're one of the good guys," Skye says.

May gives Skye a hopeless look.

"Not always," Natasha says, without vile or self-pity, just explaining. "I also did it for the bad guys, when I was the bad guys. I also betrayed men like Coulson, good men, in the same exact fashion. It could even have been Coulson, if he had been my mission."

"This woman had no mission," May points out. "She calls the shots."

 

 

**[x]**

"I hadn't seen myself as a villain before," Quinn says, while Raina struggles to pull the zipper of her dress up. He wonders if he should offer to help. "Just a very ambitious man with an amorality complex."

"And now?" she asks. "I don't see you being the instrospective type."

"Me neither. I wasn't," he says. "Then I put two bullets into a young girl's stomach."

"You sound regretful."

"Even if I'm a villain, and I'm not saying I am – it was something I found very distateful."

He wonders if that was because of the act or because of the girl. He's not sure what he's hoping for here.

"There are no villains or heroes, Quinn," she says, sitting on the bed to put on her shoes. "Just people who want different things, and they tell themselves stories to justify these desires."

"What do you desire, Raina?"

For a stupid, post-sex, endorphine-fuelled moment, he wishes she'd say it's him. He's exactly that vain, but that's nothing new.

"To remember," she says, simply.

 

 

**[x]**

"Oh, no," Skye says, when she sees him trying to get out of bed. "You can't leave your bed unaccompanied. Are you crazy?"

And she is right, because when she goes to stop him he stumbles and almost falls against Skye's hands. 

"You too?" he complains. "You're worse than Simmons."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Skye says, daring to smile. He doesn't quite return it, but he's getting there.

She helps him get into bed, pressing her palms to his ribcage carefully, noticing just how thin he's got.

 

 

**[x]**

He, of course, thinks the Clairvoyant is, basically, a psycho. It's okay, Quinn's worked with psychos before. He has also worked with saints and with the damaged, and there isn't much difference anyway.

"Why are you like this?" he asks her. They are having tea together. It's very scary.

"That's the question, isn't it?" she says, standing up. When she's not playing a role (and he has seen her, with Garrett for example, and it had been so satisfying to see how the simpleton was incapable of catching up) she's this void thing, perfect because she doesn't reflect light at all. "Do you know what happens to little girls when they realize the world is unfair and we're all going to die?"

"They become murderers."

She smiles. It's hollow. It's perfect. "No. They start reading Sade and Bataille and Schiller."

The perils of women reading, he thinks. He doesn't get it and suspects she knows that. But he is very good at making himself believe he's smarter than he is. 

"So, you're just one of those people who just want to see the world burn?" Quinn asks. He doesn't like those types. They are hardly reasonable. But he wouldn't tell her that. He's too scared of her.

"Don't worry." She smiles behind the rim of her handpainted cup. "I'll let you sell the ashes to the highest bidder."

 

 

**[x]**

"Did you ever...?" Skye doesn't want to ask, doesn't think it matters at all, but it's the kind of thing she _knows_ Coulson would worry about. She hopes she doesn't have to finish articulating the question.

"... tell her any classified information?" he finishes. Skye nods, swallows. Coulson says: "No. I didn't. She wasn't obvious about it. Of course in hindsight... there were a couple of questions. They should have set off the alarms, if I hadn't been such a fool."

"Don't say that."

"It's true."

Skye looks down. "You think I was a fool? For what happened with Ward?"

Coulson reaches out and touches his fingers to Skye's wrist, her hand resting over the covers.

"Of course not," he tells her.

She looks up, meeting his eyes. She arches an eyebrow – this is an argument she really wants to win.

 

 

**[x]**

Six years ago Raina woke up in a hotel room.

There was a scar across her forearm, messy, deep, as if someone had tried to extract something from under her skin. She didn't remember how she got it. Or anything else, for that matter.

She's naked but there's a dress on the bed.

White lilies over yellow fabric.

"Is that all?" Quinn asks when she finishes telling him, running his hand along Raina's arm.

"Mmm-uh."

"Wow, it sucks to be you."

She pushes him hard against the headboard, laughter ringing low at the back of her throat.

 

 

**[x]**

This is going to be easy, sure, she thinks.

"I have to go see Ward," she tells him, gathering her handbag but leaving the rest of her stuff in his room.

She's sitting on his bed, doing the slacked laces on her boots.

"You don't have to do that," Coulson says. She knows he's looking at her, right at her, but today Skye can't meet his eyes. Not today.

"No. I have to. I need to _see_."

She can hear Coulson exhale audibly and then she feels his hand on her back, between her shoulderblades, warm.

 

 

**[x]**

They discuss her a lot.

In fact, it's all they talk about. One might say she's the one essential ingredient in their relationship. Without her they wouldn't be here, in another five-star hotel room, in another unmade bed.

"It wasn't nice, anyway," Raina is saying and he thinks it's the first time he's heard her say something less than glowing about the Clairvoyant. He's intrigued. "What she did to Agent Coulson? Playing him like that."

Quinn smiles. "God, you have a crush on Coulson."

"Well, you have a crush on Skye."

"That's not –" it's not like that, he thinks, but he doesn't feel like explaining himself to Raina of all people. "Hey, hey, this is not about that."

"That girl punched me in the face, you know," Raina says and it's almost funny, her seriousness, like she expects some sort of loyalty from Quinn about that.

Well, he can play that game, is the only other person who can play this particular game.

"Coulson hit me in the face, too."

He draws her against him, fingers around her elbows, his thumbs digging into the crooks of her arms. He pauses, thinking about what he's just said.

He starts laughing.

"What?" Raina asks, hands on his chest.

"Nothing. I just realized John Garrett was a lot dumber than we initially thought."

Raina frowns but he doesn't explain, he tangles one hand in her hair and pulls her down, hard, against his mouth. He'll leave noble ideals like love to the good guys, to the Agent Coulsons of the world. Quinn would never want a melodrama like that one. And yes, Raina is a crazy bitch, still, but one he's happy to know, right now. That might change in ten minutes, of course, but for now – 

(this is not a love story either)

(is it?)

 

 

**[x]**

"It's so weird. I remember the things I did. But I don't remember making the decisions. I remember Grant Ward making the decisons. And Grant Ward is not me, not now."

Skye can tell it's true. She looks into Ward's eyes and there's nothing. They were very careful to wipe everything. Except – the bits Natasha managed to recover, the useful bits: locations, names of HYDRA agents, code phrases.

"And then there were things Grant Ward let Garrett put in his head. To the machine they had to strap me. When it came to Garrett... Grant Ward felt such joy, receiving all those things that made the hollowness of his mind full again. There was never any doubt. He was willing to let go of whatever could stand in his way – that's why they were such a good match, Grant Ward and HYDRA. Grant Ward and John Garrett. He was sixteen when they met. Garrett knew what he was doing."

"He specializes in that. Apparently there are people in the world with those skills. Yuck."

She looks at him and it's like seeing a photograph of someone you once used to know, it's never quite like the real thing.

"Skye, I'm sorry."

"Who is apologizing? Grant Ward the murderer or...?"

They're both murderers. There's no absolution here. Skye doesn't care about John Garrett's skills. Skye cares about knowing they dropped Victoria Hand's body in the ocean and no one will ever find it.

He shakes his head. "A container that used to house Grant Ward."

"It's okay," she says. Not to him, never to him. To herself. "I mean, it's not. I liked Grant Ward. The construct. The face he showed to the team. That fiction. I liked him. But it's not like –"

"I know," the man who is not exactly Grant Ward says. And he looks at her like he understands. "Believe me, I know. I was trying to make you fall for Grant Ward. I was _pushing_. I knew you were holding back on... many things."

Skye doesn't inquire about that. She knows what he's talking about. She doesn't feel like discussing this with a blank slate anymore than with Grant Ward the HYDRA spy.

"Yeah. It doesn't matter. That Ward never existed. And I miss him but, it'll be fine. The important thing is what happens next."

"I'm a murderer."

"Yes. So is Agent Romanoff."

"It's not the same."

"No," Skye says. Thinking _No, it's not_ , thinking _What do I know?_

"How did Agent Romanoff get it out of you? The information."

"Slowly, painfully. More painfully than the machine had been. She told me about objective reality versus subjective reality."

"You knew what you were doing was wrong."

"No. But I knew it wasn't right. _He_ knew, anyway."

"He knew."

"He didn't care."

"Out of curiosity. Have you apologized to Agent May like you just apologized to me?" she asks. The look on his face. "I thought so."

"I miss May," the man says, quite unexpectedly. "Not Grant Ward, me. It's like watching a movie starring someone with your face, and I miss those parts of the movie."

Skye feels a bit lightheaded at that. It's disgust and disbelief all rolled into one. "I don't have time to sift through subtleties of who I'm speaking to, you or Grant Ward. You're both murderers."

"Yes. Agent Romanoff wants to keep working with me. Until I recover every bit. Until I fit into myself again."

"You don't want that?"

He looks at her pointedly, "Would _you_?"

She guesses he's right but she also knows she doesn't care.

"I can't help you," she says, and it's the truest exchange she's ever had with Grant Ward.

 

 

**[x]**

This is what _you_ need to know: she might be charming, but she's a murderer.

People have forgotten this.

She might be charming, but she set out to destroy SHIELD.

She might be charming but on Tuesday she kills twelve young recruits engaged in clean up tasks around the old Academy buildings.

 

 

**[x]**

It's Wednesday.

"I'm going to find her," Coulson says.

Skye suspects she doesn't need to be here for this conversation.

"And then what?" she asks.

"I'm going to kill her."

"You don't mean that," Skye says, knowing it's a false hope, feeling as if someone had punched her where the heart is supposed to go.

"No, actually, Skye," he says, calm. "I think I do mean it."

 

 

**[x]**

It's Wednesday night.

"We're taking down the Clairvoyant," Skye says, to the only person she can.

"Are you sure you want to do this now?" May asks.

"It doesn't matter, we are going after her. It has to be now."

 _Before he can_ , Skye doesn't say.

 

 

**[x]**

Raina is nine.

(her name is not Raina, of course)

It's a cold day along he riverbank, the pubs along the north side curiously empty even for this time of the year.

Her father takes Raina in his arms, lifts her so she can see the huge all-seeing eyes of the sewage plant. He explains to the girl about the Victorian drainage system still in use, about how it cuts the household discharge before it gets to the river, he tells her about the 19th century tunnel running parallel to the Thames, that's what does the trick.

Raina listens to her father, thinking she would like to play with pebbles on the beach instead, but it's cold and she has her gloves on, and it's too cold and everything smells disgusting, rotten and only half-dead.

Raina doesn't remember any of this, of course. Doesn't remember anything except what the machine told her to remember.

But some times she wakes up in the middle of the night and she can smell dirty seagull feathers anyway.

 

 

**[x]**

"Do you need anything?" Natasha asks May, glance sliding sideways to catch Skye's expression. Natasha is escorting sometimes-Grant-Ward to the Hub. No one quite knows what will happen to him, afterwards.

May shakes her head.

Natasha's smile is almost charming. "You know, after what went down with Fury I'd never thought I'd be running errands for SHIELD again."

Skye wants to thank her, doesn't know how. Doesn't know how to talk to this woman at all. She's imposing – which is funny, because she's small and at times looks like she's lost in a way no one else can imagine.

"Agent Romanoff," she starts, when the other woman is about to leave. She doesn't know how to continue.

"It's okay," Natasha says. "It's Coulson. It's okay."

 

 

**[x]**

"You don't have a taste for this, do you?" the Clairvoyant says, sliping the coil of wire from the man's neck. "They say you lose a part of yourself when you kill another person. I've found that to be false. Every time I could see myself _growing_ instead."

Quinn looks like he's going to be sick all over the place.

"Murder is like everything, Ian," she tells him. "You need the skill but you also need practice."

Quinn wonders how long until he is that man, until that neck is his neck, the cold feel of the wire against his throat, those hands of hers, _those hands_ – he has seen those hands bring Borodin's String Quarter No.2 to new sublime heights, and he has seen those hands pull a trigger and he has seen those hands do this, those surprisingly strong hands, and he has seen those hands slip the shoulder of a new beautiful dress over Raina's skin, those surprisingly gentle hands. _Who the hell are you?_ he thinks, surprised it's for the first time and maybe he is just as shallow as everybody thinks he is.

 

 

**[x]**

Skye doesn't exactly know what they plan to do with her, or why being bait feels pretty much like the real thing. She trusts May, of course she does.

She looks around, the back of her head heavy. She knows that means she's been drugged. 

She looks around her. There's no sight of The Machine, thank fuck. She makes a mental note of everything around. A flash of something familiar. The Centipede facility where they were holding Chan in Hong Kong, these machines look like those specs. She wonders, exactly, what the Clairvoyant wants with her. It hits her, because she's been so focused on Coulson for so long, she hasn't had time to wonder. What does the Clairvoyant want with her? She hadn't thought about that. For the look of the apparatus around her, nothing good or pleasant.

The place has an eerie mood about it.

She undoes the leather straps herself (it's easy, she's done this before, don't assume you know everything about Skye because you don't) fully knowing this is not the plan. She suspects the plan has changed.

"Hello, Skye."

Yeah, this is a whole new plan.

She looks around (she doesn't want to look at the woman's face too long), she just has to bide her time until May comes here. This is the plan now. It's a good plan.

 

 

**[x]**

"You killed him," Coulson is telling her. "Back then, you got to kill yours."

May looks at him, doesn't recognize anything she sees there. She's not even going to question how he was able to follow them here, in his state.

"How did you know what we were doing?" she asks.

"Please, as if I couldn't tell Skye was hiding something from me."

"This is not the plan, Phil," she tells him.

"Do you think I'd ever do anything to put Skye in danger?" he asks, and May knows he is just pushing her buttons, knows this is exactly what he needs to say to convince her, it's too calculated, it's not really him, it's not about Skye at all. But he's also right and she got to kill hers and she doesn't even know if he would have stopped her back then if he had got there in time and she doesn't want him to become a murderer but after all it's not a choice she gets to make for him. Skye would probably shout at her but Skye is not here right now, it's just her and Phil and his blinding rage.

So she lets him follow her into the building, and at some point she lets him lead.

 

 

 

**[x]**

"You were always going to walk in here of your own will, weren't you," the Clairvoyant says.

"What do you want from me, anyway?"

"Your blood of course. It's always the blood."

She can see Skye recoil insitnctively. She likes that name, _Skye_ , she likes people who choose their own names as if that would make it easier to forge their own fates. She once believed that too, once. It was a long time ago. She was right. 

She likes the girl, too, she really does. Specially these days, now that she looks tired and lean. She finds her interesting - more than Phil Coulson, at least. There's something about her, the Clairvoyant can smell it, like a kindred spirit, if poor little Skye wasn't so attached to passé moral notions. It's too late for that, anyway. It was always too late. Skye was always going to have to die.

"It's funny. I have murdered countless people, tortured how many more, no, don't worry I'm not gloating. I started the Centipede program. And yet it took breaking that little tender heart of Phil's for you guys to get some traction."

She watches Skye bite her lower lip at the mention. Interesting. Predictable. Garrett was an immense fool and worse, an immense time-waster.

She has to laugh. Another miscalculation then. No matter, she's been wrong before.

"We were going to use Agent Ward to get to you, you know that. But I guess we were barking up the wrong tree. That's the second time I've underestimated Phil Coulson."

" _Third_."

She feels the hand on her throat, choking her, before she sees her former lover's face.

 

 

**[x]**

_What is he doing here? What the hell is he doing here?_ This is not how it was supposed to turn out. This is the opposite.

She has never seen him like this: blood-shot eyes, _empty_ eyes, his jaw clenched as his fingers close around the woman's throat. She's seen him angry, but never vicious.

Then he lets her go, but only so that he can pull a gun on her. And then his fingers are on her once more, holding her at a distance, like he's just casually _aiming_.

This is not Coulson, Skye repeats under her breath. This is not Coulson.

She can't let this happen, Skye knows.

She has to do something.

He looks ready to pull the trigger any moment. Any moment and they lose him.

Skye crashes into him, elbow first because she knows, with force enough to make him let go of her.

"No."

Coulson rubs his side, in pain. He looks at Skye like he doesn't recognize her.

"What the hell do you _think_ you're doing, Skye?"

"May!" she shouts.

May is right behind them. But she doesn't go to Coulson, she doesn't knock some sense into him like Skye is expecting her to.

"Phil..." she calls out instead and Skye thinks good, good, yes, keep calling his name, you're his friend, you are his best friend, he might not listen to me but he'll listen to you.

"Do you seriously want to get in the way of this?" Coulson asks her, not quite brandishing the gun at her, but threat enough, his words cutting.

May falls back a bit.

"I do," Skye says. "I'll get in the way."

And well, that's what she does. She puts her body between Coulson and the Clairvoyant. Between the Clairvoyant and danger. Between Coulson and destruction.

This definitely wasn't the plan.

 

 

**[x]**

"We should go," Quinn says. Because this is what he does, survive. "Coulson's team is here. Coulson is here, he's not going to stop until –"

Raina's eyes widen. "You want us to leave her here?"

"There's nothing we can do. Look at us. What can we do?"

And it's true and it's selfish and he's selfish and he doesn't really adore the Clairvoyant, it was just convenient to think he did. He's Ian Quinn and everybody knows, everybody fucking knows this about him: he doesn't care about anyone but himself.

He curls his fingers around Raina's forearm. " _Please_ , Raina, come with me."

"But –"

"You'll never find out what happened to you if you are dead," he tells her.

"She knows."

"She doesn't know shit. It's not real. It was never real."

She flashes him a disgusted look, full of white anger, and she twists her arm to untangle herself from his grip. Quinn's hand hovers in the air for a moment, stunned and bereft.

Raina walks away, towards the danger.

Quinn walks away, the opposite direction, towards what he knows how to do best: survive.

 

 

**[x]**

Skye didn't think this could ever ever happen but Coulson looks like he might just let it come to blows between them. He's tried to push her away from the Clairvoyant, and Skye has pushed right back. Coulson is still weak, he can't count on the advantage of his phsyical strength anymore. She hates thinking like this, but she calculates, she knows exactly in how much pain he is, she knows exactly how long until he tires himself out. She's been with him in every single physiotherapy session he's taken, she knows this.

"Let it go," he is telling her, warning her.

She shakes her head vehemently, like that makes a difference.

"You can hate me if you want of all I care but I'm not letting you become a murderer."

"Get. Away. From her."

"No."

You'll have to make me, she thinks. She's afraid he'll try. 

"Oh, Phil," the Clairvoyant is saying and both Skye and May turn to her with murder in her eyes. "I knew you were broken when I picked you up. I didn't know you were this broken."

 _Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up_ , Skye thinks, closing her eyes for a moment.

"Shut up, shut up. _Shut up_ ," Coulson is screaming.

He tries to walk up to the woman and Skye almost misses it. But she doesn't, and she cuts right through, holding a hand to his shoulder to stop him.

" _No_. We have her. She'll go to prison for the rest of her life."

Coulson shakes his head. The anger recedes a bit, but only to give room to bitterness. "That's not enough. That's not nearly enough."

"You don't get to decide that," she tells him.

"Is nobody interested in what I want?" the Clairvoyant says. Then, sounding like she's serious as hell: "You should pull the trigger, Phil. _I did_."

He tries to walk past but Skye blocks him, when he tries to push her with one hand Skye does not bulk at all.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks.

"Because you are not this man. She doesn't know you. You are not broken."

He shoves her, hard.

Skye doesn't lose her footing. She steps back a bit, but she doesn't lose her footing.

"You're just an ignorant little girl," Coulson spits at her.

"Maybe," she says, simply, refusing to give in or give up an inch.

"You don't understand!"

She shoves him back, this time _hard_. He almost loses his footing. She can see she's hurt him a bit – she feels sick to her stomach but she needs to stop him somehow.

She says, hot tears of anger in her eyes: "I don't understand... _What_? That you loved her and she betrayed you? You are right, I _don't_ understand. Because the only man I have ever really loved is entirely incapable of betrayal. And he wouldn't kill a person in cold blood like this, not matter what she's done to him. That's how I know you can't do it, Coulson. So if you really want to make me understand you're going to have to shoot me."

For a moment he just stares at her, eyes unchanged, and Skye wonders if he's undersood a single word of what she's just said. She wouldn't want to have to repeat it.

For just the briefest moment she wonders if he would, shoot at her – because Skye knows he cares about her but that woman is...

He throws the gun so hard against the floor Skye thinks it might go off from the impact. It doesn't.

"Handcuff her," he says, voice towards May. "Make sure she can't move."

May complies and the Clairvoyant doesn't even make a sound against the obvious rough treatment at those hands. She flashes them all a _well, isn't this interesting_ face that promises ruin and destruction and hellfire at some later time.

Coulson walks out and doesn't look at Skye once.

 

 

**[x]**

She watches as the Clairvoyant is being dragged away by as many SHIELD agents as they can spare and yes, she is that dangerous.

She watches as the Clairvoyant is being dragged away and she feels no triumph.

She walks back towards the SUV.

Coulson is holding his side, right where Skye elbowed him at full speed.

"Did I hit you too hard?" she asks, trying to keep her voice light, normal, like they can go on as they have before.

Coulson looks up at her for a moment, doesn't answer, then looks down at the wound again. He has a face like he's never going to speak a single word to Skye again and Skye is fine with that, _that_ is a cost she calculated beforehand. It's not too high a price to pay.

She leans back against the door of the SUV.

"Look, I totally understand if you hate me for the rest of your life but–"

" _Hate you_?" he asks, his until-now dead eyes lighting up with a spark of incomprehension.

Skye feels his fingers brush her neck and she very consciously doesn't associate them with the way he held the Clairvoyant, hand around her throat like he could snap it at any time. Thankfully his fingers dart up to Skye's cheeks and then he lifts them to her hair, grasping at it a bit too tight but there's also tenderness there, rocking her head in his hands, like he'd like to say something but he can't.

And god Skye wants him to say something, her name at least, but Coulson's lips are pressed together like he's trying very hard not to say anything at all. He sighs, a tiny falling sound – she can almost hear the moment it hurts, the moment air stings out of his scarred lungs.

His hands drop from her face to her sides and then along her back and suddenly he's hugging her, folding into her, his face buried against Skye's neck. She realizes he's not a very big man when she holds him, arms around his shoulders. He's not big or broad and she doesn't remember Miles and he doesn't remember Ward and no one has ever felt as helpless against her body. He _doesn't hate her_ , it's all she can think about.

She doesn't hear him cry, but she feels damp skin against the skin of her neck.

 

 

**[x]**

"Please, tell me," Raina pleads, as they cross paths while they are both being dragged away by SHIELD goons and into separate armored cars, guard at each side of them in the back seat.

 _Please, tell me_.

The Clairvoyant laughs as she walks past her.

 

 

**[x]**

May drives them away from here.

There was no discussion; Coulson got in the back seat and Skye followed him and isn't that always the case. Skye would like certain reassurance that this is not going to always be the sequence of events, but for now the fact that he doesn't hate her is enough for her. Everything else they can work out, eventually.

"She's going to get away," Coulson says, looking ahead, not looking at her. "She'll get away and she'll kill again."

There's such sad confidence in his words. Like he had already seen it happen.

No, Skye thinks, I haven't come this far to let her win.

No, she thinks. She has to do something.

This is not how the story ends, she thinks. I get to decide, and the story doesn't end like this.

"No," she tells him, grabbing his hand and squeezing his fingers. "She _won't_. We'll stop her."

He says nothing. Their hands entwined stay there, between them on the seat, and his is dead weight, it feels just like when he was in a coma, there's nothing there, his hands are cold.

And then – 

He squeezes her hand in return.

It's the slightest pressure of fingers around fingers. It would be easy for Skye to miss it. But she doesn't. It'd be easy to miss it but she could never miss it.

It's not much, she knows. It's _nothing_. In the face of a world in chaos, of pain and lies and darkness and murderers and traitors, this one gesture is too small to even matter. But that's exactly why it does matter. It matters a lot. It's all that matters.

May drives on. She looks at Skye through the rear view mirror, notices Skye's world has shrunk into a simple touch.

Coulson doesn't let go of the hand that's holding him (the hand that's been holding him all this time), not once during the whole car journey.

(this is a love story)

  



End file.
